“Well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development … ” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.24).

Regarding early-life trauma, people tend to know (perhaps commonsensically) that they should not loudly quarrel when, for instance, a baby is in the next room; however, do they know about the intricacies of why not? Since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123). This causes its brain to improperly develop.

Also, how many non-academics are aware that it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm? When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg.42). Furthermore, how many of us were aware that, since young children completely rely on their parents for protection and sustenance, they will understandably stress over having their parents angry at them for prolonged periods of time? (It makes me question the wisdom of punishing children by sending them to their room without dinner.)

I did not know any of the above until I heavily researched the topic for specifics. ... Still, we humans can be a suspicious, stubborn and overly proud species, especially when it comes to child rearing.

Meantime, a person can have an unlimited number of children regardless of one's incapacity to raise them in a healthy manner, let alone according to child-development science. Being free nations, society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children; society can, however, educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those high-schoolers who presently plan to always remain childless.

I believe that greater factual knowledge of what exactly entails raising and nurturing a fully sentient child/consciousness in this messed-up world — therefore the immense importance and often overwhelming responsibility of proper rearing — would probably make a student less likely to willfully procreate as adults. If nothing else, child-development curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood.